Club says no thanks to Ohio food charity

Region's pantries dwindle as demand grows

A service group's removal of a popular soup kitchen in Coolville leaves a bitter taste in a divided and economically troubled community, where 1,000 impoverished residents no longer have access to a once-a-week source of free sustenance

November 25, 2004|By Tim Jones, Tribune national correspondent.

COOLVILLE, Ohio — After two years of defying the maxim that there is no free lunch, the free lunch at the busiest place in town ended the day before Thanksgiving.

The Friends & Neighbors Community Food Center, a popular soup kitchen and food pantry that served nearly 1,000 of the older adults, unemployed and underemployed in this economically troubled region of southeastern Ohio, served its last meal Wednesday because the center's landlord--the Coolville Lions Club--has booted it out.

As government studies report that increasing numbers of Americans struggle to feed themselves and their families, the interests of fighting poverty and protecting a community's image collided in this hardscrabble hamlet of 528 people.

By an 8-7 vote, the Lions Club decided to remove the soup kitchen and pantry. Bitterness prevails.

"They thought we were making Coolville look like a poor town, that we made the town look bad," said Lisa Roberts, a co-director of the pantry, which served a Thanksgiving crowd of about 170 people turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, yams and pies in a goodbye lunch Wednesday.

Linda Ward, 54, a single mother with three teenage boys, called the closing of the food pantry "really very tragic for me."

"We struggle--and I don't know what we're going to do without it," said Ward, who lives in nearby Stewart.

The decision to oust the food center from the Lions Club comes as pantries across the Midwest complain of dwindling food stocks and increasing demand. A report from the Department of Agriculture released Monday said more than 12 million American families--about 11 percent of U.S. households--had trouble last year obtaining enough food.

Another study released this week from the Chicago Urban League, Roosevelt University and Northern Illinois University reported that the percentage of Chicago-area working families living below the federal poverty line has increased, almost certainly sending more people to food lines.

"I haven't seen food stocks this low in 10 years," said Marilyn Sloan, a food bank coordinator for Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action, which collects and distributes food to a nine-county region in southeastern Ohio. On Monday, nearly 700 cars filed through a line to pick up food boxes in Logan, about 50 miles southeast of Columbus. The line of waiting vehicles stretched for more than half a mile.

On Tuesday, about 400 families went through the twice-a-month food pantry in nearby McArthur, which had 350 frozen turkeys, 150 chickens and 600 loaves of bread on hand. "Demand is going up," said Gary Blair, who runs the Care Outreach Ministry.

Success bred resentment

In Coolville, the success of the 2-year-old pantry and soup kitchen drew national and international media attention. On a monthly budget of $200, the center provided health, nutrition and social services to residents. The once-a-month free lunch that started two years ago soon became a weekly affair, every Wednesday. But success soon bred resentment.

Just as churches that provide sleeping quarters sometimes clash with communities that don't want poor people in the neighborhood, the success of the food center and the increasing traffic created friction within the 19-member Coolville Lions Club.

"They came to us and said they wanted to provide emergency food assistance. Then, all of a sudden, they started taking over our Lions Club," said Alice Dotson, a club member who voted to remove the pantry.

"It didn't feel like a Lions Club anymore," she added. "It felt like a food pantry warehouse."

Another member who asked not to be identified said the pantry operation "just got out of hand . . . A lot of people just got tired of it." When pantry operators proposed an "emergency food operation," the member said the Lions Club had no idea it would grow into such a thriving endeavor.

Ohio has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates--6.3 percent in October--and this southeastern region has the highest rates in the state, 16.6 percent in one county.

Vote hurt food services

The decision to remove the pantry from the Lions Club has bitterly divided the service organization's membership and, at least temporarily, endangered food and nutrition services in a region where poverty rates of 20 percent or higher are common. John Life, president of the Lions Club and father of one of the pantry's co-directors, Hazel Life, said the decision ignored the reality that many people in the area are suffering.

"A lot of people won't admit anything," John Life said.

The Lions Club wanted the pantry operators to pay rent--$100 a month--to help cover costs. The club appointed a committee to study possible ways to resolve the dispute.

Jim Patsey, superintendent of the Federal Hocking Local School District and a Lions Club member, wrote a check for $300 to cover the next three months of rent. But on Nov. 4, a majority of members voted to sever the relationship with the pantry.